The Amulet of Samarkand

by Jonathan Stroud

  “Well, then—good luck, my boy.”

  No answer. Presently, Nathaniel heard footsteps clattering away down the stairs.

  Then Schyler smiled; all the wrinkles and creases of his face seemed to stem from the corners of his eyes, but the eyes themselves were blank slits. His body was so stooped with age that he was scarcely taller than Nathaniel; the skin upon his hands looked waxy, dusted with liver spots.Yet Nathaniel could sense the power in him.

  “John,” Schyler said. “That is your name, is it not? John Mandrake. We were very surprised to find you in the house. Where is your demon? Have you lost it? That is a careless thing.”

  Nathaniel compressed his lips. He glanced aside at the nearest display table. It had a few strange objects on it: stone bowls, bone pipes, and a large moth-eaten headdress, perhaps once worn by a North American shaman. All useless to him.

  “I was for killing you straightaway,” Schyler said,"but Simon is more farsighted than I am. He suggested we make you a proposition.”

  “Which is?” Nathaniel was looking at the next display table—it carried a few small, dull cubes of metal, wrapped in faded paper strips.

  The magician followed his gaze. “Ah—you are admiring Miss Cathcart’s collection? You will find nothing of power there. It is fashionable among rich and stupid commoners to have magical items in their houses, though quite unfashionable to know anything about them. Tcha! Ignorance is bliss. Sholto Pinn is always being pestered by society fools for trinkets like these.”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “You mentioned a proposition.”

  “Yes. In a few minutes the hundred most powerful and eminent ministers in the Government will be dead, along with our sainted Prime Minister. When Simon’s new administration takes control, the lower magical orders will follow us unquestioningly, since we will be stronger than they. However, we are not numerous, and there will soon be spaces, vacancies to fill in the higher reaches of the Government. We shall require talented new magicians to help us rule. Great wealth and the relaxations of power await our allies. Well now, you are young, Mandrake, but we recognize your ability. You have the makings of a great magician. Join with us, and we shall provide you with the apprenticeship you have always craved. Think about it—no more experiments in solitude, no more bowing or scraping to fools who are scarcely fit to lick your boots! We will test and inspire you, we will draw out your talent and let it breathe. And one day, perhaps, when Simon and I are gone, you will be supreme….”

  The voice trailed off, left the image hanging. Nathaniel was silent. Six years of frustrated ambition were etched into his mind. Six years of suppressed desire—to be recognized for what he was, to exercise his power openly, to go to Parliament as a great minister of State. And now his enemies were offering it all to him. He sighed heavily.

  “You are tempted, John, I see that. Well, what do you say?”

  He looked the old magician directly in the eye. “Does Simon Lovelace really think I will join him?”

  “He does.”

  “After everything that has happened?”

  “Even so. He knows how your mind works.”

  “Then Simon Lovelace is a fool.”

  “John—”

  “An arrogant fool!”

  “You must—”

  “After what he has done to me? He could offer up the world and I’d refuse it. Join him? I would rather die!”

  Schyler nodded, as if satisfied. “Yes. I know. That is what I told him you’d say. I perceived you as you are—a silly, muddled child. Tcha! You have not been brought up correctly; your mind is fogged. You are of no use to us.”

  He took a step forward. His shoes squeaked on the shiny floor.

  “Well, aren’t you going to run, little boy? Your djinni is gone. You have no other power. Would you not like a head start?”

  Nathaniel did not run. He knew it would be fatal. He flicked a look at the other tables, but couldn’t see clearly what objects they displayed; his enemy blocked the way to them.

  “Do you know,” the old man said, “I was impressed the first time we met—so young, so full of knowledge. I thought Simon was very harsh on you; even the affair with the mites was amusing and displayed an enterprising nature. Ordinarily I would kill you slowly—that would amuse me further. But we have important business in a few moments and I cannot spare the time.”

  The magician raised a hand and spoke a word. A shining black nimbus appeared, glimmering and fluctuating around his fingers.

  Nathaniel threw himself to one side.

  39

  I hoped the boy could keep out of trouble long enough for me to reach him. Getting in was taking longer than I thought.

  Up and down the wall the lizard scutted; round cornices, over arches, across pilasters, its progress ever more speedy and erratic. Each window it came to—and there were plenty of them in the mansion—was firmly shut, causing it to flick its tongue in frustration. Hadn’t Lovelace and Co. ever heard of the benefits of fresh air?

  Many minutes went by. Still no luck. Truth was, I was loath to break in, except as a last resort. It was impossible to tell whether the rooms beyond had watchers who might respond to the slightest untoward noise. If I could only find a crack, a cranny to sneak through…. But the place was too well sealed.

  There was nothing for it: I would have to try a chimney.

  With this in mind I headed roofward, only to have my attention caught by a very tall and ornate set of windows a little way off on a projecting wing of the house. They suggested a sizeable room beyond. Not only that, but a powerful network of magical bars crisscrossed the windows on the seventh plane. None of the Hall’s other windows had such defenses. My curiosity was piqued.

  The lizard sped across to take a look, scales scuffling on the stones. It gripped a column and poked its head toward the window, being careful to keep well back from the glowing bars. What it saw inside was interesting, all right. The windows looked onto a vast circular hall or auditorium, brightly lit by a dozen chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. At the center was a small raised podium draped with red cloth, around which a hundred chairs had been arranged in a neat semicircle. A speaker’s stand stood on the podium, complete with glass and jug of water. Evidently this was the venue for the conference.

  Everything about the auditorium’s decor—from the crystal chandeliers to the rich gold trimmings on the walls—was designed to appeal to the magicians’(vulgar) sense of wealth and status. But the really extraordinary thing about the room was the floor, which seemed to be entirely made of glass. From wall to wall it glinted and gleamed, refracting the light of the chandeliers in a dozen unusual tints and shades. If this wasn’t unusual enough, beneath the glass stretched an immense and very beautiful carpet. It was Persian made, displaying—amid a wealth of dragons, chimeras, manticores, and birds—a fantastically detailed hunting scene. A life-size prince and his court rode into a forest, surrounded by dogs, leopards, kestrels, and other trained beasts; ahead of them, among the bushes, a host of fleet-footed deer skipped away. Horns blew, pennants waved. It was an idealized Eastern fairy-tale court and I would have been quite impressed, had I not glanced at a couple of the faces of the courtiers. That rather spoiled the effect. One of them sported Lovelace’s horrid mug; another looked like Sholto Pinn. Elsewhere, I spied my erstwhile captor, Jessica Whitwell, riding a white mare. Trust Lovelace to spoil a perfectly good work of art with such an ingratiating fancy.1 No doubt the prince was Devereaux, the Prime Minister, and every important magician was pictured among his fawning throng.

  This curious floor was not the only odd thing about the circular hall. All the other windows that looked onto it had shimmering defenses similar to the one through which I spied. Reasonable enough: soon most of the Government would be inside—the room had to be safe from attack. But hidden in the stonework of my window frame were things that looked like embedded metal rods, and their purpose was not at all clear.

  I was just pondering this when a door at the far end of
the auditorium opened and a magician walked swiftly in. It was the oily man I had seen passing in the car: Lime, the boy had called him, one of Lovelace’s confederates. He carried an object in his hand, shrouded under a cloth. With hasty steps and eyes flicking nervously back and forth, he crossed to the podium, mounted it and approached the speaker’s stand. There was a shelf inside the stand, hidden from the floor below, and the man placed the object inside it.

  Before he did so, he removed the cloth and a shiver ran down my scales.

  It was the summoning horn I’d seen in Lovelace’s study on the night I stole the Amulet of Samarkand. The ivory was yellow with age and had been reinforced with slender metal bands, but the blackened fingerprints on its side2 were still quite visible.

  A summoning horn …

  I began to see daylight. The magical bars at the windows, the metal ones embedded in the stonework, ready to spring shut. The auditorium’s defenses weren’t to keep anything out—they were to keep everyone in.

  It was definitely time I got inside.

  With scant regard for any overflying sentries, I scampered up the wall and over the red-tiled roof of the mansion to the nearest chimney. I darted to the rim of the pot and was about to duck inside, when I drew back, all of a quiver. A net of sparkling threads was suspended below me across the hole. Blocked.

  I ran to the next. Same again.

  In considerable agitation, I crossed and recrossed the roof of Heddleham Hall, checking every chimney. Each one was sealed. More than one magician had gone to great lengths to protect the place from spies.

  I halted at last, wondering what to do.

  All this time, at the front of the house below, a steady stream of chauffeured cars3 had drawn up, disgorged their occupants and headed off to a parking lot at the side. Most of the guests were here now; the conference was about to begin.

  I looked across the lawns. A few late arrivals were speeding toward the house.

  And they weren’t the only ones.

  In the middle of the lawn was a lake adorned with an ornamental fountain, depicting an amorous Greek god trying to kiss a dolphin.4 Beyond the lake, the drive curled into the trees toward the entrance gateway. And along it three figures came striding, two going fast, the third faster. For a man who had recently been knocked about by a field mouse, Mr. Squalls was racing along at a fair pace. Son was doing even better: presumably his lack of clothes encouraged him on his way (at this distance he looked like one big goosebump.) But neither of them matched the pace of the bearded mercenary, whose cloak swirled out behind him as he strode off the drive onto the lawn.

  Ah. This might spell trouble.

  I perched on the lip of the chimney pot, cursing my restraint with Squalls and Son5 and debating whether I could ignore the distant trio. But another look decided me. The bearded man was coming along faster than ever. Strange—his paces seemed ordinary ones, but they ate up the ground at blinding speed. He had almost halved the distance to the lake already. In another minute he would be at the house, ready to raise the alarm.

  Getting into the house would have to wait. There wasn’t time to be discreet. I became a blackbird and flew purposefully from the mansion roof.

  The man in black strode nearer. I noted a flicker in the air about his legs, an odd discrepancy, as if their movement was not properly contained within any of the planes. Then I understood: he wore seven-league boots.6 After a few more paces, his trajectory would be too swift to follow—he might travel a mile with each step. I speeded up my flight.

  The lakeside was a pretty spot (if you didn’t count the statue of the disreputable old god and the dolphin). A young gardener was weeding the margins of the shore. A few innocent ducks floated dreamily on the surface of the water. Bulrushes waved in the breeze. Someone had planted a small bower of honeysuckle by the lake: its leaves shone a pleasant, peaceful green in the afternoon sun.

  That was just for the record. My first Detonation missed the mercenary (it being difficult to judge the speed of someone wearing seven-league boots), but hit the bower, which vaporized instantly. The gardener yelped and jumped into the lake, carrying the ducks off on a small tidal wave. The bulrushes caught fire. The mercenary looked up. He hadn’t noticed me before, probably being intent on keeping his boots under control, so it wasn’t strictly sporting, but hey—I was late for a conference. My second Detonation caught him directly in the chest. He disappeared in a mass of emerald flames.

  Why can’t all problems be as easy to resolve?

  I did a quick circuit, eyeing the horizon, but there were no watchers and nothing dangerous in sight, unless you count the underwear of Squalls’s son as he and his dad turned tail and raced for the park gateway. Fine. I was just about to head off back to the house, when the smoke from my Detonation cleared away, revealing the mercenary sitting in a muddy depression three feet deep, mucky, blinking, but very much alive.

  Hmm.That was something I hadn’t counted on.

  I screeched to a halt in midair, turned, and delivered another, more concentrated blast. It was the kind that would have made even Jabor’s knees tremble a bit; certainly it should have turned most humans into a wisp of smoke blowing in the wind.

  But not Beardy. As the flames died down again, he was just getting to his feet, as casual as you like! He looked as if he’d been having a catnap. Admittedly, much of his cloak had burned away, but the body beneath was still hale and hearty.

  I didn’t bother trying again. I can take a hint.

  The man reached inside his cloak and from a hidden pocket withdrew a silver disc. With unexpected speed he reached back and threw—it missed my beak by a feather’s breadth and returned spinning to his hand in a lazy arc.

  That did it. I’d gone through a lot in the last few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans … it made no difference. I’d been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about, and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke was joining in too, when all I’d been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

  I lost my temper.

  The angriest blackbird you’ve ever seen made a dive for the statue in the middle of the lake. It landed at the base of the dolphin’s tail, stretched its wings around the stone and, as it heaved, took a gargoyle’s form once more. Dolphin and god7 were ripped from their foundations. With a brittle cracking and the rasp of ripping lead, the statue came away. A jet of water spurted from the ruptured pipes inside. The gargoyle raised the statue above its head, gave a bound, and landed on the lakeside bank, not far from where the mercenary was standing.

  He didn’t seem as fazed as I’d have liked. He threw the disc again. It bit into my arm, poisoning me with silver.

  Ignoring the pain, I tossed the statue like a Highland caber. It did a couple of stylish flips and landed on the mercenary with a soft thump.

  He looked winded, I’ll give him that. But even so, he wasn’t anything like the flatness I required. I could see him struggling under the prone god, trying to get a grip so he could shove it away. This was getting tedious. Well, if I couldn’t stop him, I could certainly slow him down. While he was still floundering around, I jumped over, unlaced his seven-league boots and plucked them off his feet. Then I threw them as hard as I could into the middle of the lake, where the ducks were busily regrouping. The boots splashed down in their midst and instantly sank out of sight.

  “You’ll pay for that,” the man said. He was still struggling with the statue, moving it slowly off his chest.

  “You don’t know when to give up, do you?” I said, scratching a horn irritably. I was wondering what more to do, when I felt my insides being sucked out through my back. My essence squirmed and writhed. I gasped. The mercenary looked on as my form grew vaporous and weak.

  He gave a heave and shoved the statue off. Through my pain, I saw him getting to his feet. “Stop, coward!” he cried. “You must stand and fight!”

  I shook a dissolving claw at him. “Consider y
ourself lucky,” I groaned. “I’m letting you off. I had you on the ropes and don’t you forg—”

  Then I was gone, and my rebuke with me.

  40

  The bolt of jet-black plasm hit the nearest display table. The shaman’s headdress, the pots and pipes, the table itself, and a section of the floor all vanished with a noise like something being sucked sharply down a drain. Foul steam rose from the wound in the floor.

  A few feet away, Nathaniel rolled head over heels and got straight to his feet. His head felt woozy from the roll, but he did not hesitate. He ran for the next display table, the one with the metal cubes. As the old magician raised his hand once more, he scooped up as many cubes as he could and disappeared behind a neighboring bookcase. The second plasm bolt struck just behind him.

  He paused for a moment. Beyond the bookshelves, the old magician made a clucking noise with his tongue. “What are you doing? Do you plan to toss more mites at me?”

  Nathaniel glanced at the objects in his hand. Not mites, but scarcely any better. Prague Cubes: minor conjuror’s tricks peddled by low-caste magicians. Each cube was little more than a mite bottled up inside a metal shell with a variety of mineral powders. When released with a simple command, mite and powders combusted in an amusing way. Silly diversions, nothing more. Certainly not weapons.

  Each cube had a paper wrap stamped with the famous distilling-glass logo of the alchemists of Golden Lane. They were old, probably nineteenth century. Perhaps they would not work at all.

  Nathaniel picked one and tossed it, wrapping and all, over the top of the shelves.

  He shouted the Release Command.

  With a brilliant shower of silver sparkles and a tinny melody the imp inside the cube combusted. A faint but unmistakable fragrance of lavender filled the gallery.

  He heard the old magician burst into a hearty chuckle. “How charming! Please—some more! I wish to smell my best when we take over the country! Do you have rowan flavor? That would be my favorite!”